Menu
I had a heartbreaking experience when I was 9. I always wanted to be a guard. The most wonderful girl in the world was a guard. When I got polio and then went back to school, they made me a guard. A teacher took away my guard button.
It’s ironic that at age 32, at probably the greatest moment of my career, with The Godfather having such an enormous success, I wasn’t even aware of it, because I was somewhere else under the deadline again.
I landed a job with Roger Corman. The job was to write the English dialogue for a Russian science fiction picture. I didn’t speak any Russian. He didn’t care whether I could understand what they were saying he wanted me to make up dialogue.
Most Italians who came to this country are very patriotic. There was this exciting possibility that if you worked real hard, and you loved something, you could become successful.
Listen, if there’s one sure-fire rule that I have learned in this business, it’s that I don’t know anything about human nature.
We were raised in an Italian-American household, although we didn’t speak Italian in the house. We were very proud of being Italian, and had Italian music, ate Italian food.
When newspapers started to publish the box office scores of movies, I was horrified. Those results are totally fake because they never include the promotion budget.
I wanted to write and direct movies and not be forced to adapt them from a bestselling book.
I’ve been offered lots of movies. There’s always some actor who’s doing a project and would like to have me do it. But you look at the project and think, ‘Gee, there are a lot of good directors who could do that.’ I’d like to do something only I can do.
People feel the worst film I made was ‘Jack.’ But to this day, when I get checks from old movies I’ve made, ‘Jack’ is one of the biggest ones. No one knows that. If people hate the movie, they hate the movie. I just wanted to work with Robin Williams.